Nurses in the Algarve have started a public campaign to highlight what they call a “brutal shortage” of staff in the region’s public hospitals and health centres.
The campaign, launched on Monday at Faro Hospital, is running under the slogan “Our lives don’t have overtime” and aims to show the effects that this shortage of staff have on the lives of nurses and patients. Several posters highlighting their plight have been posted at the hospital.
According to the Portuguese Nurses’ Union (SEP), the Algarve is missing around 1,500 nurses, a shortage that worsens every day. “We want to alert the public to the severe shortage of nurses and the heavy workload our colleagues are being forced to endure,” union leader Guadalupe Simões told Lusa news agency.
The campaign will continue throughout the week with actions in health centres across the region, including in Vila Real de Santo António, Tavira, Albufeira, Loulé, Lagos, Vila do Bispo and Aljezur, before ending on Friday at Portimão Hospital. There, the union plans to present all the data collected and confirm what they suspect: a huge staff shortage that is crippling local healthcare.
Figures shared by the SEP paint a worrying picture. At Faro Hospital alone, 70 nurses are missing from intensive care and 39 from the emergency (A&E) department. At Portimão Hospital, the A&E unit is short of 20 nurses, while orthopaedics is missing 10. Across the region, thousands of owed days off and unpaid overtime hours are also piling up.
According to the union, the situation worsens daily as more nurses continue to leave the national health service (SNS) and are not replaced.
The union argues that the ongoing nurse shortage violates existing regulations that specify how many nurses should be on duty in each department. “Unfortunately, no service meets these safe staffing rules,” Simões explained.
SEP also criticised the government, accusing the Health Minister of focusing only on new work agreements while ignoring the urgent need to hire more nurses. “What this means is that what’s coming will not improve work-life balance or fix the shortage of staff,” said Simões. “The Algarve shows this problem clearly, but the truth is that it’s the same across the whole country.”
If the situation continues to worsen, the union warns that nurses may have no choice but to escalate their fight and take further action.
Photos of nurses at Faro Hospital, posted on Facebook by the Sindicato dos Enfermeiros Portugueses:
